


like normal people feel

by fightlikeagirl



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Age Difference, Alex Visits Wizards College, M/M, Unhealthy Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 19:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19979620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightlikeagirl/pseuds/fightlikeagirl
Summary: “You’re resourceful,” Roger murmurs, stroking his cheek. Alex shuts his eyes. “One of the things I admire about you—one of the reasons I chose you, out of all the squires. Use your resources.”His usual sources failing him, Duke Roger tries a new approach.





	like normal people feel

**Author's Note:**

> takes place in the middle of In the Hand of the Goddess; thom is sixteen, which in a fic that features roger of conté is probably the least fucked up part of any of this
> 
> dithered for a real long time about whether this was ready to post or not because it's been so long since i finished something that i've lost my calibration for what's acceptable finished quality but here it is i guess!

“I have a task for you,” Duke Roger says. “A little different, perhaps, but I’m confident you’ll be up to it.” He smiles, the slow, secret smile Alex has noticed he uses whenever he wants something from someone. 

It works distressingly well. Alex has never mastered keeping his heartbeat steady when Roger looks at him like that. “What do you need from me?”

“Information,” Roger tells him. “A student at the City of the Gods has—caught my attention. I’ve had unusual trouble finding out more about him.” He frowns, disconcertingly. “My spies have been developing a habit of turning up dead lately.”

Spying. Not the kind of thing Alex has trained for, ever. With a sword in his hand, he knows exactly where his enemy stands. “My lord, couldn’t you send—”

“No.” Roger cuts him off sharply. “I’m sending you. And I don’t recall inviting you to question my orders.”

The smile is gone, and his eyes are glittering in a way that Alex knows means danger, just as he’s learned how to head off the storm. He slides off his chair and onto his knees. The Duke isn’t usually this quick to temper; whatever this is about, his frustration must have been growing for a long time.

“Forgive me,” he murmurs, eyes down. “I’m your Grace’s servant. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“Of course you will.” Roger sounds mollified, at least. His hand in Alex’s hair is light enough to tease, too brief to satisfy. “As you always have.”

Cautiously, Alex tilts his head back up; he stays kneeling. Roger paces in front of the fire.

“I need a different approach,” he says. “I can only trust _you_ for this, do you understand?” He stops and looks back at Alex. “I’m sending you to retrieve a translation one of the masters has been working on for me. You’re unGifted—painfully so—” he smiles, fond with a hint of condescension— “so they won’t suspect you to be my spy. Find the student. Find out what he’s hiding—I won’t believe it’s simple stupidity—find out what he’s _doing_.”

“The student?” Alex asks, feeling apprehensive without knowing why.

“His name,” Roger says, mouth slightly quirked, “is Thom of Trebond.”

“Alan’s brother.” He doesn’t know what to make of this. He knows Alan’s twin is studying sorcery, but Alan’s spoken dismissively of it, and he’s come away with the impression that Thom was rather dim. And he imagines this is something Roger wants done without word getting back to the boy’s brother. “My lord. I don’t mean to question, it’s just...I don’t know what you expect _me_ to accomplish.”

Roger comes to stand in front of him where he’s still kneeling, takes his chin and tilts it up. His thumb brushes over Alex’s lower lip and instinctively he opens his mouth, his tongue reaching out to taste the tip of Roger’s thumb before it’s pulled back.

“You’re resourceful,” Roger murmurs, stroking his cheek. Alex shuts his eyes. “One of the things I admire about you—one of the reasons I chose you, out of all the squires. Use your resources.” He pulls away and Alex opens his eyes again, sees Roger’s returned to the papers spread across his desk. “You’re dismissed.”

He opens his mouth, takes a breath. Can’t think of anything he could possibly say, productive or otherwise, and shuts it again. Rises, returns to his own room to fall into an unsatisfying and fitful sleep.

It’s petty, and uselessly self-flagellating, but he makes himself get up long before anyone in the palace besides servants is awake, knowing it’s rare that Roger is up before eleven. His former knight-master surprises him anyway, meeting him at the stables as he’s preparing to leave. He’s bright-eyed and as neatly groomed as he always is; Alex is as bleary and unkempt as he always is at half past six in the morning.

“We’ll speak again on your return,” Roger says, his hand curling briefly around Alex’s shoulder. “I’ll look forward to it.”

He nods stiffly, and makes himself mount up. It takes an agonizing amount of strength not to look back as he rides out the palace gates and down the road, but he manages it.

He makes the journey quick where he can, sleeps rougher than he might have otherwise. The towns between Corus and the City of the Gods are few, but he doesn’t stop in the ones he passes, alternating riding and walking his horse to keep him from collapsing, stopping only when he’s exhausted, wherever that happens. He sets up camp, eats a cold meal, and rises before dawn for the next day’s ride. The scenery is dull anyway, sparse and craggy.

He does take a room when he arrives, a cheap one, but clean, and the stew in the inn’s kitchen is a welcome reminder that the pleasures of civilized life include hot food. The innkeeper directs him to a bathhouse in town where he’s able to scrub himself clean of most of the grime of five days hard riding.

When he returns to the inn, one of the girls downstairs catches his eye, sways toward him in a way that he supposes is meant to draw his attention to the low cut of her bodice and the generous cut of her bosom.

“You look in need of company, m’lord,” she says, she laughs when he pulls his arm away and flees wordlessly because nothing will come to his tongue.

In his room, enjoying that other great civilized comfort—mattresses—he thinks briefly about jerking off, but falls asleep before he can quite find the energy.

At least he doesn’t need to ask directions to the Mithran cloisters. They dominate the city, rising up against the gray mountains with their red clay-shingled roofs. Wooden wind chimes dangle from a few, and he likes the sound they make when the breezes lift them.

He deliberately doesn’t ask after the man he’s supposed to be retrieving a book from, instead taking the opportunity to get himself lost in the winding corridors of the cloisters. Servants gather here and there, but he doesn’t hear Trebond’s name from any of them. He doesn’t actually have a clue how to find Roger’s man, either, because none of the rooms seem to be labeled, and after at least an hour of wandering, he’s successful only in locating the kitchens.

There’s enough chatter and shouted orders and people running back and forth between boiling pots that at least he’s not noticed and can lean against a wall to catch his breath. It’s so different in here, so far from the scholarly quiet of the masters and the monks just through the doorway—

“Are you looking for someone?” a voice inquires from just beside his ear, and Alex jerks.

He stares. There’s no point asking the boy’s name, not with that red hair, those purple eyes, the pert smile.

“Well?” Thom of Trebond asks, and Alex shakes himself.

“Sort of,” he says. “Yes.”

“Sort of yes?” Thom smiles, but his eyes are reserved.

“I’m looking for Master...” He’s forgotten the gods-curst name of his cover story. He wracks his brains. “Master Gwystyl.”

Thom folds his arms and tilts his head. “You don’t sound very certain.”

“I’m certain.” Alex tries not to sound too defensive.

“And why are you looking for Master Gwystyl?” Thom tilts his head further.

“I’m not asking you _your_ business,” Alex snaps, and Thom laughs, unfolding his arms and unfurrowing his brow.

“ _You’re_ certainly not from here,” he says as he takes Alex by the arm to guide him down the hall. His hand is warm and his fingers are delicate, uncalloused by sword drill the way Alan’s are, the way his own are. He’s close enough that Alex can smell the faint hint of soap, could lean in and kiss his head. “I’m surprised you made it as far down as you did before someone took offense to that short temper and shortened your nose for it.”

“Lucky I found you, then?” Alex says, and it comes out as a question without him meaning it to.

“Lucky I’m in a charitable mood today,” Thom says. “And you’re different and that’s interesting.”

It sounds like a compliment but it doesn’t feel like one. “You hardly know me.”

“I’m a good judge of character,” Thom says cheerfully before halting before a door. “And here we are. Perhaps I’ll see you again. Perhaps I won’t.”

He knocks on the door, two sharp raps, and then he’s gone, around one corner and into the endless bowels of the cloisters. Alex is still staring when the door opens.

The master tells him irritably that he’s still finishing the translation for Duke Roger anyway, and it’ll be at least another day and a half, longer the more he’s interrupted like this.

“How will I know when you’re finished—” Alex starts to say before the door is slammed in his face— “without interrupting you?”

Morosely, he finds his way back into the city without getting lost once, buys a spiced potato-and-chickpea pastry from a stall and finds a fountain to sit on while he eats it and feels sorry for himself.

So. What he’s learned about Thom of Trebond: Eccentric. Handsy. Used to getting his own way. From his limited knowledge, it’s possible these are traits all sorcerers share. He rather doubts it will be enough to satisfy Roger, and he’s found that Roger’s anger and subsequent discipline is nothing compared to his cold disappointment when Alex fails in something Roger thinks he ought to be capable of.

The same girl is downstairs when he returns to the inn at nightfall, and he hears her laugh when he dodges her eyes and bolts upstairs. He thinks about Roger’s hands on him when he returns, but he can’t seem to picture anything but an unimpressed gaze and a quiet, _I expected better of you, Alex,_ and he gives up before he can bring himself off.

What else can he do? He goes back to the cloisters and finds his way back to the kitchens.

He doesn’t have to wait long. “You’re back,” Thom says, and this time Alex manages to return his gaze steadily.

“The translation my master’s waiting for isn’t finished,” he says, shrugging. “For the time being, my future is dictated by the whims of ancient Ekallatum.”

“Hmmm.” Thom peers at him. “And you came looking for amusement in the kitchens?”

“It worked last time,” Alex says easily, and Thom stares hard at him.

“What’s your name?” he says abruptly.

“Alex,” Alex says, and when Thom continues to look at him, amends, “Alexander of Tirragen.” He leaves out the Sir. It still doesn’t feel quite right in his mouth.

“Hmmm,” Thom says again. “Hill country. But you’re not descended from hillmen.”

Alex mentally adds ‘nosy’ and ‘annoying’ to his notes about Thom. “No,” he says shortly.

Thom waits. His stare is disconcerting—Alan’s is the same way, but Alan’s also had to learn court manners, whereas Thom seems to have decided politeness was for other people some time ago.

“Chelogu,” Alex says, giving up. “Before it was part of the Carthaki Empire. I don’t know how many generations ago. I don’t know much more about it, really.”

“Really.” The smile Thom turns on him is still guarded, but there’s a little more warmth in his eyes. “You’ve captured my attention, Sir Alexander,” he says, “for now. Come with me.” He takes Alex’s arm once more, squeezing a little, and Alex can’t help his pulse jumping at that.

“I didn’t say I was looking for your attention,” he says, as Thom takes him who-knows-where.

Thom scoffs.

“Well I _didn’t_.” Alex doesn’t know who he’s trying to fool with this. And he really, _really_ doesn’t know why Roger couldn’t find someone who knew anything at _all_ about subterfuge for this.

“Have it your way, then.” Another hallway, another door, and then.

Thom tugs him through when Alex stops, frozen at the doorway, like if he takes a step through it will shatter the illusion.

“It’s alright,” he says, “no one will care. No one will notice—only the gardeners who tend it come in here. It’s more a curiosity than anything. None of the plants here have any kind of useful magical properties.”

The roof above the garden at first seems open to the sky before Alex sees the narrow metal strips holding perfectly clear glass panes in place. It’s possibly the only places in the Mithran cloisters where the sun can make its way in, and it’s taken advantage. The earth is red and warm, a path winding through the grasses that are all the brighter against it. And the grasses are tall, brushy and bending over, nothing like what grows on the hills at Tirragen. There are flowers that end with bright red tips like paintbrushes, and short, spiky plants with waxy leaves. He can barely remember that the blunt tops of the Grimhold Mountains still surround them.

“Some of them are native to Chelogu,” Thom says. He sounds serious, for once. “I don’t know which ones, though.”

“I don’t either,” Alex says, for lack of anything better to say. He drifts through the garden slowly, taking it in piece by piece, one blade of grass at a time. He wonders how they keep it like this—not the glass dome alone, surely? Oh—magic, obviously. He wonders, then, what kind of magic it takes to sustain a place like this, even as a curiosity. He’ll have to ask Roger, those he’s never sure if he’ll get an answer or a lesson in condescension.

It takes a long time before he remembers his host and turns back to Thom, who’s watching him with the oddest look on his face.

Thom invites—well, he never actually _asks,_ he _takes_ Alex back to his chambers, pours them both a glass of wine, for all that it’s barely a quarter past three. The life of a mage-in-training is rather different from that of a would-be knight, he thinks. Thom is four years younger than him; at this age he wasn’t inviting strange men for palace tours and wine in his room, he was—well. He wasn’t inviting _strange_ men to his room.

Thoughts of Roger barge through his thoughts, making his hand tremble on the wineglass. He still isn’t sure what he’s doing here, or even if he should be here at all.

“You seem apprehensive,” Thom offers from where he’s sprawled lazily on a couch, blunt as ever.

“I’m not,” Alex says, and makes himself take a long sip of the wine.

“Aren’t you.”

Alex doesn’t reply to that, and Thom seems uninterested in pressing when his target doesn’t rise to his bait. He drains the glass, a bit faster than he means to, Thom rises from the couch, languidly, to pour him another, and Alex catches his wrist.

He means the gesture to say _stop_ , but he doesn’t seem to be able to let go. Thom’s wrist is so narrow under his hand, so pale, only the lightest few freckles dotting it. He’s _so_ different from his brother, Alex wouldn’t think they were even related if they didn’t look so much alike.

Thom is tilting his head again, the way he had when they first met. He’s smiling, too.

“I can’t,” Alex says, “I shouldn’t.”

 _You’re resourceful_ echoes through his mind, and he shudders.

“‘Can’t’ is one thing,” Thom says, his voice soft. “‘Shouldn’t’, on the other hand...I find ‘shouldn’t’ to be somewhat more malleable.” He’s very close. Alex can feel the warmth of his breath.

“I’m not,” he tries again before breaking off, and Thom laughs out loud.

“Now _that_ ,” he says, “I don’t believe.”

Thom kisses him very softly, the softest he’s ever been kissed. He reflects that he’s only ever kissed two people before, Marjorie of Tameran in back of the palace kitchens when he was twelve, and Roger, who won’t seem to stop turning up in his thoughts at inopportune times.

Thom is still smiling when he pulls back.

Alex sucks him off while Thom lies, naked and exquisite, on his back in his bed, his moans unashamed, his hands in Alex’s curls. He pulls, hard, just like Roger likes to, and Alex’s hips hitch uncontrollably.

“Gods,” Thom groans, “ _Alex_ ,” and his come spatters Alex’s chin, his chest. He’s glad Thom had at least the attention span to unlace his tunic before growing impatient and pulling him down onto the bed; he certainly wouldn’t have fit into one of Thom’s spares. He mouths at Thom’s neck while the younger boy pants, kissing and sucking at the hollow of his collarbone before nipping impulsively.

Thom yelps at that, opening his eyes, but he’s grinning, and Alex can’t bring himself to stop him when Thom unlaces his breeches with quick fingers, tugging his cock out to stroke and tease while Alex squirms against him.

“Did they teach you how to do that at the palace?” Thom murmurs, pulling Alex close with his free arm.

“Yes,” Alex manages to gasp out, “right after Grammar, before Mathematics.” Thom’s hand is _so_ good, _so_ tight—

“You must have been the star pupil,” Thom says, his voice low. “Someone certainly taught you well—”

Alex’s heart goes tight and he’s gripping both of Thom’s wrists before he realizes it. Underneath him, Thom only smiles. “And who did you learn from, then?” he says, his throat feeling dry. He doesn’t make the obvious comment, about Mithran priests and little boys, and Thom keeps smiling.

“Not the other students,” he says. “They don’t like me. They think I’m peculiar.” He stretches, his ribcage outlined under translucent skin. “Servants, mostly.”

That takes Alex aback. He spent eight years being drilled almost daily on the Code of Chivalry. He lets go of Thom’s wrists. “Servants?”

“And why not?” Thom wriggles underneath him, arching his hips, rubbing his thigh against Alex’s still-hard cock. “You have your own master, don’t you?”

His fragile patience snaps. “ _Don’t_ ,” Alex spits, pinning Thom once more, bearing down on the smaller boy, “don’t—don’t you—”

“Don’t what?” Thom’s tone is still light. “Don’t say his name? Shall I pretend I don’t know why you’re here?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Alex knows he doesn’t sound convincing, yet one more reason he shouldn’t be here.

“Don’t lie, Alex, it’s so boring,” Thom says. “You’re not very good at subtlety. And the pieces aren’t so hard to put together. In any case, you’ll recall I could have left you forlornly wandering the halls of the cloisters until you inevitably starved to death and someone found your bones in a very sad heap. And yet, here you are.”

“Here I am,” Alex echoes.

“I told you you’d captured my attention, didn’t I,” Thom says. “And I wondered who the Duke of Conté would send to do his spywork next.”

“He didn’t send me,” Alex insists, and when Thom raises an eyebrow, says, “He didn’t send me to seduce you.”

“Do you believe that?” Alex doesn’t answer and Thom sighs. “You’re not what I expected, Alexander of Tirragen.”

“I don’t know what you expected.” Alex feels very tired all of a sudden. At some point he’s let go of Thom, who draws him gently back down to lie beside him. His cock has softened significantly but Thom works him patiently and steadily until he’s twitching, jerking up into Thom’s hand.

“I’ve wondered what it would be like to have the Duke as a teacher,” Thom murmurs, and Alex is too tired to stop him. “I don’t think I’d be very good at it.”

“No,” Alex says, and gasps a little when Thom twists his wrist. “You— _ah_ —talk too much.”

“It’s always been my weakness,” Thom says cheerfully, and that, too—the first lessons Roger taught him were in respect and obedience. “But there’s ways and ways of shutting me up.”

“I’d like to learn them, then,” Alex says, and comes hard into Thom’s hand, white against his sheets.

He doesn’t linger in the afterglow, mostly because he can already tell if he stays much longer, Thom’s hand petting through his hair, it will be all too easy to fall asleep here. He wants to be home already, back in Corus, out of the prison of these mountains.

“Stay, if you like.” Thom makes no effort to get up when Alex extricates himself, only turns over onto his stomach, glancing over.

“I can’t.” His shirt is—somewhere. There, draped over the chair. One of his boots is under the table, the other tossed in a corner. Thom isn’t watching him as he pulls his tunic back over his head, laces his jerkin back up hastily. There are papers scattered across the table. If he sets his foot _here_ , bends over to do the laces on his boots, he can make out a few of the chickenscratch words, a letter in progress to a scholar in Galla he’s heard Roger mention, references to magical concepts Alex might not understand but that he knows should be far beyond a sixteen-year-old apprentice. It will do.

“Your translation, I know.” Alex’s hand slips pulling on his boot; when he looks over, Thom’s looking at him again. He has the feeling he’s learned nothing Thom hadn’t allowed him. “You’ll be able to find the master again yourself?”

“I’ll be fine.” If he can’t find it, if the man’s not finished, he’s leaving without it, Roger’s wrath be damned. It was never important, anyway. Someone else can play courier.

He looks back one last time, halfway through the door, because he can’t help himself.

Thom is smiling. “We’ll see each other again, Sir Alexander.”

 _Sorcerers._ He has no reply to that.

He makes better time coming out of the mountains than going up them. He does stop, his last night on the road, at an inn where he can at least make himself a little more presentable, a warm bath sluicing the last fortnight from his skin. He dreams of Thom, glittering with purple light, who turns into Alan, and then back again. Roger’s translation is safe in his saddlebag, wrapped in an oiled cloth to keep the weather off it.

His instinct, as it always is, is to go to Roger as soon as his horse canters through the palace gates. Old instincts are hard to suppress but he does it anyway, making himself take his time grooming his horse himself, seeing his things to his rooms and changing out of his travel-stained clothes. He’s tired—he’s pushed himself harder than he should have, trying to get this over and done with.

Things were easier when he was a squire, his room adjoining his knight-master’s. Now, he’s one more knight with palace quarters wherever they can fit him, and whether that’s clear on the other side of the palace from Roger’s rooms in the Royal Wing is not of particular concern to anyone else. He’s so tired. He’d hurried home for a reason, but sitting on his bed, eyes focused on nothing, he just wants to sleep. The thought of Roger’s displeasure if he delays any longer is the only thing that gets him back on his feet, rinsing his face before he leaves.

Roger is frowning when he opens the door, his gaze distracted, and he’s dressed as though Alex has caught him in the middle of study in soft trousers and a shirt of richly-dyed deep blue linen with loose, billowing sleeves, open at his throat with lacings undone far enough to draw Alex’s eye to the trace of dark hair exposed there. He pulls his gaze back up hastily and Roger looks down at him, just _looks_ at him, sapphire eyes gone dark, mouth curling up gently, expectant and so heavy that it feels like the world’s closed down to just them. Just him, and the weight of Roger’s attention upon him.

“Your Grace,” is all he can say. He forgets, every time, how intense it feels to return to the Duke’s side after more than a few days away.

“Alex,” Roger says, the fond note drawing some of the chill of the road out of his limbs. “You didn’t send word. I hadn’t realized you’d arrived.” He takes Alex by the hand to draw him inside, circling his wrist, and, stiffly, Alex lets himself be led.

“I thought I’d make it sooner than a messenger would.”

“Eager to be back?” Roger pulls out a chair for him, his hand sliding from the small of Alex’s back up to rest on his shoulder as he sits down. He doesn’t wait for an answer, and he surely knows what it would be anyway. “Well then,” he says, and Alex half-expects him to finish with _Report, squire._ He doesn’t, though, just waits, the heat from his hand warm through Alex’s shirt. Grounding, promise and threat, both at once.

“He’s...” Alex starts, trails off. Where to even begin with Thom of Trebond? “Peculiar.”

“Not especially useful, but a bit of color doesn’t hurt.” Roger’s voice is dry but his hand tightens warningly.

“Different from his brother,” he hurries to say. “Nothing like him, really. He’s clever—you were right, he’s hiding himself, it’s not stupidity.” He names some of the books on Thom’s shelf, and the correspondence he’d seen, closing his eyes to try and remember some of the unfamiliar words. Roger makes a surprised noise at one of the names, and hums thoughtfully when Alex finishes. 

He hesitates a moment. “There’s something else. He knew I was coming. I don’t think I would ever have seen him if he didn’t know I was coming.”

Absolute silence in response. Roger has gone very still, the hand on Alex’s shoulder rigid. “The Sight.” His voice is far-away.

It’s frightening. He’s been frightened of his master before, and he’s learned that sometimes when a storm is on the horizon you have to let it roll over you.

“My lord.” His voice is quiet, cautious, and Roger doesn’t reply. He turns a little, catches Roger’s free hand and draws it slowly toward himself, brings it up to press his lips against the knuckles.

The hand on his shoulder squeezes then relaxes, sliding over to the base of his neck. Roger guides his head backwards and holds him there, stands looking down at him for a long moment.

He won’t ask. As much as he aches for Roger’s praise, as desperate as he is to meet with approval, he won’t ask.

Roger looks down at Alex, sly through long lashes, before lowering himself slowly, elegantly, to one knee. No humility touches the gesture, his spine unbent. One hand on Alex’s leg holds him still while the other eases off his boot. He wraps both hands around Alex’s calf, drawing them down slowly until they reach his foot, thumbs circling the bones of his ankle. “I told you you were resourceful.” His other boot is removed with the same care, Roger pressing one quick kiss to the side of his knee and making him twitch. “You have seldom given me cause for disappointment.”

He rises, bending over Alex to undo the laces at the front of his tunic while Alex says nothing at all. There’s none of the business-like efficiency that he often employs, undressing his former squire; instead it’s a slow slide of his shirt down his shoulders, exposing his skin inch by inch. Romantic, like being courted.

“And will young Alan hear about this, do you think?”

“No,” Alex says quickly, without thinking, and the Duke pauses for just a moment before laughing softly.

“You’re quite certain?”

His cheeks are warm. “I’m certain.”

Roger leans down to kiss him, slowly, with intent. “Tell me, then.” His lips draws down Alex’s throat. “Where did you let him touch you?”

Alex can’t move, can’t speak, as the Duke’s fingers circle the peak of his nipple.

“Here?” He leaves a kiss behind, one hand at Alex’s waist, the other splayed flat against the small of his back. “Here...or here...”

He undoes the laces of Alex’s breeches with agonizing slowness, kissing him again, and again, everywhere his hands have been. “Did he touch you—here—”

“Please,” Alex manages; it never takes Roger long to break through the control he’d worked so long for. His hands grip the arms of the chair. “Please—sir—”

Roger kisses his belly, makes him squirm, but maintains the same unhurried pace working Alex’s breeches down and off. Soft caresses are all he gets, Roger chasing off his body’s memory of Thom’s hands, until he’s bare, a mess, legs fallen apart as his shoulders press back against the chair.

He’s not above begging; Roger taught him that long ago. “Your Grace. _Please_.”

“What shall I give you,” Roger says, lips at his jaw where it meets his ear, “my _most_ devoted servant.”

He coaxes Alex’s cock to life, stroking him as he tries to hold back gasping whimpers, knuckles whitening against the chair. Practiced touches, an expert twist of the wrist—Roger had always known, had been the first to show him, just what to do to take him apart. Alex has never bothered wondering where Roger learned so well.

His release, when Roger allows it at last, leaves him nearly senseless, the dull ache of being away from Roger’s side as long as he has growing into something hard and sharp and painful that’s finally been pulled out of him. His breathing still comes in stuttering gasps and it hurts to uncurl his fingers from the arms of the chair. Dimly, he’s aware of Roger standing back from him, watching him coolly. Impossible to tell what he’s thinking.

He can see he’s made a mess of Roger’s fine linen shirt, but no sharp reprove comes. Roger pulls the shirt over his head and tosses it on a chair, smiles when he catches Alex watching him through half-closed eyes. Alex would happily stay like this, tracing the muscles under pale skin with just his eyes, his broad shoulders, the fine dark hair of his chest, but Roger says, “Come here,” and he obeys, letting the Duke pull him close, his head resting against the curve of Roger’s neck, bare skin of their chests pressed against each other.

“When the time comes,” Roger murmurs, big hand stroking up and down Alex’s back. “When the time comes,” he says again, and Alex trembles a little at the words, “you’ll remember who you belong to.”

“Always,” Alex whispers.

Tucked close under Roger’s arm, he sleeps and doesn’t dream of red hair, or thin, freckled arms. He rises just before dawn to slip back to his own rooms, the palace chilly in the early morning air. He still feels off-kilter, something inside his body’s rhythm upset so that every time he tries to regain his equilibrium he’s thrown off further. 

He can do nothing but trust that Roger will rebalance the equation—when the time comes.

**Author's Note:**

> MAN i'm pretty sure the last time i wrote fanfic for a written work was when i was twelve and writing harry potter fic, it's weirdly anxiety-provoking. anyway i started this as a distraction from a longer tortall fic that may or may not ever see the light of day, and then it was five thousand words later and i STILL feel like there's more to be done but sometimes you just gotta post something and move on.
> 
> sorry i finished something for the first time in three years and it was for pairing maybe three people care about from a kids fantasy series from the eighties, but also, i am not sorry at all


End file.
